Hard rain

Ariel Sharon's post-disengagement strategy is starting to emerge and Palestinians are already killing each other in Gaza, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem

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Palestinian police raising their rifles during the funeral of Major Ali Makawi in Gaza

The margin of Ariel Sharon's victory over Binyamin Netanyahu at the Likud Central Committee on 27 September was slight, a mere 106 out of 3,000 votes cast. But its significance was profound.

This had little to do with the dispute at issue -- whether (as Netanyahu desired) to bring primary elections for the party leadership forward to November or (as Sharon demanded) leave them until May. It had everything to do with Sharon's success in steering the bulk of his party behind the overwhelmingly Israeli consensus he has forged -- renouncing the "dream" of Greater Israel in favour of a state with lesser land but with borders determined by Israel.

Polls carried out after the vote among Likud members registered the scale of Sharon's triumph: 47 per cent supported him for leadership as against 34 per cent for Netanyahu. Three weeks later those ratios were reversed.

The question now is what will Sharon do with this power? Some believe he should continue the process begun with the Gaza withdrawal, "a strategy of unilaterally determining the permanent borders of Israel," says one of his aides, Eyal Arad. Sharon was swift to rebut him, ruling out all further withdrawals. "We have only one political plan, the roadmap, on which we agreed and behind which the US stands like a fortified wall," he told a conference in Jerusalem on 29 September.

There are reasons to believe him, at least this side of the Israeli elections. Between now and then, Sharon's path is likely to continue on three tracks. The first is to re-unite his party behind his leadership and preserve his parliamentary majority. The second is to strengthen the fortified wall between himself and the Bush administration over policy towards the Palestinians. He rehearsed its main points to his cabinet on 2 October.

First, "the focus must be Gaza, so that the post-disengagement process is successful. We made it clear [to Washington] that progress in Gaza on security, economic and administrative issues will positively affect the process with the Palestinians. They must run their affairs on their own and prove they can do so."

Second, "while the Palestinian Authority elections [in January] are an internal Palestinian affair which Israel cannot prevent, Hamas's participation in the elections will dictate Israel's degree of cooperation with those elections. Hamas can participate in the elections only if it renounces violence, disarms and retracts its pledge to destroy the state of Israel.

On the first point Sharon has long had Bush's support: that everything now hinges on the PA's capacity to deliver governance in Gaza. On the second he now seems to have the backing of US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. "It is absolutely the case that you cannot have armed groups ultimately participating in politics with no expectation that they're going to disarm," she told a meeting at Princeton University on 2 October, in answer to a question on Hamas's participation in the elections.

The third track is "the new rules of the game" for the military conflict with the Palestinians. Very simply, this translates as zero tolerance for any attempt by the Palestinian resistance to use Gaza as a base to mount attacks on Israel. It was shown by operation "First Rain", launched after mortars were fired following an explosion at a Hamas rally in Gaza on 22 September that left 23 dead. As veteran military correspondent, Alex Fishman, noted in Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper on 30 September, it was "less a rain, more a tornado".

Over the following seven days, Israel renewed its policy of assassinating militants, bombing civilian infrastructure and arresting Palestinians in mass sweeps, all methods tried and tested throughout the Intifada. For the first time since the 1967 War, it used artillery to clear entire regions in Gaza and flew F-16s to trigger sonic booms at a rate of one every two hours.

The aim of the onslaught was two-fold. In Gaza it was intended to sow fear among the civilian population, creating a popular groundswell for the PA to "act" against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the West Bank the purpose was to wreck Hamas as an electoral force. Of the 415 Palestinians Israel arrested last week, 250 were Hamas members, most of them civilian cadre, including 14 local government candidates and 15 campaign managers. The sweep also netted political leaders Hassan Youssef, Mohamed Ghazzal and Ahmed Haj Ali, all three driving forces behind the turn to elections in the movement.

The rain brought its harvest. By 24 September, Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, announced an end to all military operations from the Strip. And on 27 September instructions were issued to Gaza's Palestinian police to "arrest any person" not in uniform. Both decisions were taken unilaterally, without consultation and in response to the Israeli attacks. And both lay the seeds for confrontation.

It erupted on 2 October, when Palestinian police allegedly tried to arrest Mohamed Al-Rantissi, son of the assassinated Hamas leader Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantissi. Hamas reacted with absolute force, firing on police stations in Sheikh Radwan and the Beach refugee camp and leaving three Palestinians dead, including a police officer and 32-year-old woman, Hiyam Nasser.

The police reacted by storming Gaza's Legislative Council building, demanding protection and, above all, leadership. The police are insisting that they cannot be viewed as simply one militia among others. Hamas is adamant that there can be no move to disarm its fighters, especially when they are once more under attack from Israel.

Is there any way out from this impasse, short of civil war? Yes, says Palestinian analyst, Hani Al-Masri. "The resistance must be allowed to preserve its arms. But this does not mean it can act like a collection of private fiefdoms which decides when and how to act. Resistance is a national activity that should be decided by all Palestinians through their legitimate national institutions."

This is why, he says, the Palestinians must proceed with the elections in January, since "only they can result in a single legitimacy to which all parties will be bound." It is also why the Palestinians must resist all attempts to determine who and on what platform the parties can run, and this for one basic reason. "Only if Hamas participates can there be legitimate national elections," he says.